Half Price Books union keeps growing as workers in Apple Valley organize

July 20, 2026 by
Workers with fists raised outside a Half Price Books store

Workers at the Half Price Books in Apple Valley celebrate their successful union election. (UFCW photo)

The Twin Cities area has its fifth union bookstore, after workers at the Half Price Books in Apple Valley voted earlier this month to organize with United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 663.

Workers at the company’s stores in St. Louis Park, Coon Rapids, St. Paul and Roseville organized in 2021, won their union elections in 2022, and ratified their first contract in 2024. UFCW Local 1189 represents workers at the St. Paul and Roseville stores.

The new, 15-person bargaining unit in Apple Valley will look to build on gains made by union members at the other locations, bookseller Drew Schmidt said. That includes guardrails for the employer’s use of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

“Half Price Books is attempting to iron out the individuality that shapes our community by standardizing our roles and incorporating AI in our workplace,” Schmidt said. “Unionizing is our way of encouraging Half Price Books to correct its course.”

Apple Valley workers also hope to bargain for higher wages and better staffing in their store, which sees steady foot traffic despite being the smallest Half Price Books outlet in the area, bookseller Katelyn Anderson said.

“We’re fairly busy and have much more limited space,” she said. “I feel like sometimes we don’t have enough people to cover how busy our store is.”

Meanwhile, workers’ wages aren’t keeping up with the rising cost of living, and Anderson said the pay does not reflect the level of expertise she and her co-workers must maintain. Unlike most other retail jobs, Half Price Books workers make cash offers to people looking to sell their books, albums or other materials.

“It’s really hard to kind of feel comfortable in this job with how much work we’re asked to do for the wages that we get,” Anderson said.

“I love this job. It’s cool to see the stuff that comes in and be able to help people find materials that they’re excited and passionate about. It’s amazing, but it does kind of feel defeating because they’re just not really livable wages anymore.”

Apple Valley workers voted 10-5 in favor of unionizing. The National Labor Relations Board certified the election results July 8.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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OPEIU members decry ‘culture of fear’ at HealthPartners, set May 5 strike deadline

April 29, 2025 by

Members of Local 12 held informational picketing outside HealthPartners’ headquarters in Bloomington last November.

For the second time since negotiations began last September, members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12 have warned HealthPartners that they intend to strike unless the two sides make meaningful progress toward a new contract.

The union, which represents about 1,000 workers across the Twin Cities, is planning a 10-day strike, beginning May 5.

Union leaders said picketing would touch all 31 HealthPartners facilities, including its headquarters in Bloomington and local clinics, where union members staff the check-in desks and work in back-office positions like scheduling, claims and accounting. The union was arranging a “click-it line” for members in telework positions.

Local 12’s bargaining team scrapped plans for a three-day strike in March after HealthPartners negotiators improved their economic proposal. But progress has stalled since then, representative Cesar Montufar said during a press conference April 18.

HealthPartners’ lowest-paid workers, he said, “are fed up, and they’re ready to go.”

OPEIU’s bargaining team has pushed hard for wage increases to keep up with inflation, pointing to a Local 12 analysis that estimates members have lost $3.50 per hour in buying power since their last contract took effect three years ago.

HealthPartners’ initial offer of 0.25% annual raises sparked outrage across the bargaining unit. The offer has since increased to 4%.

But bargaining team members said that pay increases given to executives like CEO Andrea Walsh, whose compensation grew from $1.4 million in 2017 to $3.8 million in 2023, prove the not-for-profit organization can do better.

“These executives are drawing the line for our members at 4%,” Montufar said. “That’s 4% for someone trying to survive on $30,000 a year, but $400,000 raises for the executives? That is the definition of corporate greed.”

Members of Local 12’s bargaining team are also demanding accountability for what they described as an increasingly hostile work environment.

At the press conference, current workers and union representatives alleged that HealthPartners has retaliated against union activists, used aggressive discipline to push veteran employees into lower-paying positions and established a “culture of fear” under Walsh’s leadership.

A 26-year veteran of HealthPartners, Janell Kelly said she recently took a “huge pay cut” to transfer into the dental clinic. The move came after a supervisor in her previous department, during a one-on-one meeting, chided Kelly because she “wasn’t smiling anymore” after the unexpected death of her son.

“My supervisor was making my life miserable,” Kelly said. “I knew that job well and was confident in doing it, I just couldn’t take the way I was treated.”

In the dental clinic, Kelly has encountered management issues of a different kind.

“When my supervisor found out I was on the bargaining team, she began a campaign to fire me, including fabricating evidence and secretly making changes to my timecard in an attempt to steal wages,” Kelly said. “Their behavior is unacceptable.”

Kelly isn’t the only HealthPartners worker to chafe at a changing attitude among management. Union representative Kelsie Morgan described a trend of “more punitive discipline than legitimate corrective action” doled out to members she represents over the last decade.

HealthPartners fired one probationary employee because she “smelled like cigarettes and perfume and didn’t adhere to a break schedule,” Morgan said. But when she followed up with the worker, Morgan heard a much different story: she was in the middle of trying to leave an abusive relationship.

“Work was her safe space,” Morgan said. “The day she was not adhering to her break schedule was the day she was working to get on the phone with her lawyer and find help with her situation.”

Paula Moyer, a union steward, recalled attending disciplinary meetings with a co-worker who was awaiting surgery for a congenital spine condition. Rather than offering compassion and support, Moyer said, her manager wrote the worker up for missing the window to report excused absences by mere minutes.

“You think most people would kind of want to help, you know?” Moyer said. “Maybe bring over a hot dish. But no, not this supervisor.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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OPEIU members warn HealthPartners they’re ‘not going back’ on health benefits

December 13, 2024 by

Local 12 members rallied outside HealthPartners’ offices in Bloomington on a day that saw the union hold informational picketing at over 30 locations across the metro.

Members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 12 held informational picketing Nov. 26 at the 31 HealthPartners offices and clinics across the Twin Cities where they work, hoping to give the health provider a preview of what’s coming if workers are forced to strike.

The picketing, held four days before OPEIU members’ contract was set to expire, drew solidarity from members of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa who also work at HealthPartners.

At a rally outside HealthPartners’ corporate offices in Bloomington, Local 12 members blasted the organization’s executives for pleading poverty at the bargaining table while their CEO earns $1,500 per hour – more than many members earn in a pay period.

OPEIU members are sticking to three priorities in bargaining: maintaining their health insurance benefits, raising wages to keep up with inflation and ending abuse and harassment on the job.

“I don’t get paid enough to get abused over the phone,” Tia Burnett, a Local 12 member and clinic assistant HealthPartners’ Woodbury facility. “I’m one of the many people here who work three jobs. I’m a single person with no kids, and I’m still struggling to make ends meet due to the fact that I’m not getting paid enough.”

The union said HealthPartners has demanded a 400% increase to members’ health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. At the rally in Bloomington, which union members at other locations were looped into via Zoom, bargaining team member Paula Moyer called the employers’ health benefit proposal “punitive and outrageous.”

“We know we have great benefits, but the benefits we have fought for are what we think everyone in the country should have,” Moyer, a clinic assistant, said. “We’re not going back.”

Local 12 members work at the front desks and check-ins at clinics and in support positions such as scheduling, claims and accounting.

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Food service workers in Hastings schools set Feb. 7 strike date

January 26, 2023 by

Hastings food service workers plan to strike Feb. 7. (SEIU Local 284 photo)

Food service workers today put the Hastings public school district on notice of their intent to strike Feb. 7 unless the two sides reach agreement on a new union contract before then.

“We’re united, and we’re ready to strike if the district won’t pay us what we’re worth and stop nickel-and-diming us about our working hours and snow days,” said Sara Rapp, a cook at Hastings High School and member of the union’s bargaining team.

Contract negotiations between Independent School District 200 and the 35-person bargaining unit, represented by Service Employees (SEIU) Local 284, began last June and later entered mediation. The previous, two-year contract expired June 30.

No bargaining dates are currently on the calendar between now and Feb. 7, according to Local 284.

The two sides remain far apart when it comes to wages, Local 284 contract organizer Hal Goetz said, with workers holding out for an increase roughly double what the district is offering.

Most workers in the bargaining unit earn between $15 and just over $18 per hour. A few are paid less, and head cooks’ pay scale runs about $7 per hour higher, Goetz said.

Union members also are fighting to maintain affordable dental and family insurance premiums, and for language ensuring a minimum number of work hours. A union statement said workers “have been clear that any settlement needs to include a fair wage increase to combat the impact of historic inflation and maintain stability through regular hours and health insurance benefits.”

Workers voted in December to authorize a strike, and they are asking supporters to sign onto a letter to the superintendent and school board members at seiu.mn/hastings.

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Electric Machinery workers rally in Minneapolis: ‘Two percent isn’t going to cut it’

August 31, 2022 by

Electric Machinery workers rally in northeast Minneapolis.

Members of IUE-CWA Local 1140 held an informational rally outside WEG Electric Machinery in northeast Minneapolis yesterday to show management their solidarity – and to clear up a potential misconception.

“The company seems to think this is bargaining as usual,” Local 1140 representative Richard Shorter said. “We know that’s not the case.

“We’ve been bargaining since June, and we need them to understand that 2% isn’t going to cut it.”

Shorter spoke to over 50 workers who marched onto Central Avenue after the day shift ended. Several said they are watching these negotiations closely, given the hot job market and an inflation rate that has hovered above 8% nationally.

“Anything less than a cost of living adjustment is a wage cut at this point,” said machinist Mike Lundgren, who has six years of experience with Electric Machinery.

“They were trying to bring people in at $16 per hour, and now it’s $18 per hour,” said Cliff Anderson, in his 49th year working at the plant. “People can go earn about the same thing at Burger King.”

Local 1140’s Richard Shorter gives Electric Machinery workers a bargaining update.

Owned by Brazil-based WEG since 2011, Electric Machinery designs, manufactures and services large electrical motors and generators. The company’s roots in northeast Minneapolis go back over 125 years.

At its peak, employment reached 1,500. About 130 IUE-CWA members currently work in the facility.

“They used to actually care about the people,” Anderson said. “Now it’s a company that cares about satisfying the corporate head, nothing else.”

IUE-CWA is the branch of the Communications Workers union that brings together manufacturing and industrial workers in a wide range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, furniture, and appliances.

Negotiations between Local 1140 and WEG Electric Machinery are scheduled to continue through September. The contract expires in early October.

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Coalition delivers 7,000 postcards to state senators urging action on minimum wage

March 18, 2014 by
Organizers of the Raise the Wage Coalition hold a press conference before delivering postcards to state senators.

Organizers of the Raise the Wage Coalition hold a press conference before delivering postcards to state senators.

Supporters of raising the state’s minimum wage – and indexing it to keep up with the cost of living – kept the pressure on state senators today, delivering more than 7,000 postcards from constituents demanding action.

The postcards are the product of conversations with Minnesotans that began, Raise the Wage Coalition spokesperson Jennifer Munt said, with a question: Should people who work full time have to live in poverty?

“Almost always the answer was ‘no,’” Munt said. “And it was an urgent ‘no’ for low-wage workers.”

web.minwage-postcardsOrganizers of the Raise the Wage Coalition, which includes unions, community organizations, religious groups and non-profits, have been starting those conversations at public events like the Minnesota State Fair and in conversations with Minnesotans on their doorsteps.

“We’ve been talking with our members at the doors each night since last May,” Working America statewide director Bree Halverson said.

Working America members are workers who do not have the benefit of a union contract on the job, and they “overwhelmingly support raising the minimum wage,” Halverson added. In fact, many would benefit directly from an increase to $9.50 per hour.

“Some of our members work two or three jobs because they can’t find one with an hourly wage that goes far enough, or they don’t get enough hours to make ends meet,” Halverson said.

While both the Senate and House have passed minimum-wage increases, a final bill remains stuck in conference committee at the Capitol. Coalition members support the House bill, which would raise the wage to $9.50 by 2015 and includes indexing so that the wage keeps its value as the cost of living increases.

Munt, communications director for Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said indexing “protects the purchasing power of the working poor, and it ensures their families won’t slip into poverty.”

“We don’t freeze the price of groceries, so why would we freeze the minimum wage?” she asked.

Indexing also makes sure coalition members won’t have to fire up the campaign again in years to come.

“Indexing keeps politics out of the minimum wage and ensures workers won’t have to wait another nine years for an increase,” Munt said.

The coalition also wants the minimum-wage bill to:

• Conform Minnesota’s definition of a large business to the federal threshold of $500,000 annual gross sales.

• Conform state law to reflect the federal 40-hour work week and twelve weeks of parental leave upon the birth or adoption of a child.

• Protect tipped workers from having their wages cut by not allowing tip penalty language to be inserted into the bill.

[Click here for information on how you can support efforts to raise the wage!]

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